1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automatic article sorting apparatus and, more particularly, to such apparatus adapted for sorting laundered articles according to their lengths.
2. Description of the Prior Art
My prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,467,138, issued Aug. 19, 1969, discloses apparatus for automatically folding laundered articles of various sizes, such apparatus being particularly adapted for commercial or institutional use where large quantities of articles are laundered. Clean, unfolded articles of mixed sizes are sequentially fed into one portion of the apparatus and the articles in a folded condition are dispensed from another portion of the machine onto a receiving table or conveyor. However, the apparatus does not provide means for sorting the articles in any manner, the folded articles being dispensed in the same order as they were fed into the apparatus.
While such an automatic folding apparatus has been commercially successful and has provided substantial cost savings by eliminating the labor previously required to fold large quantities of laundered articles, time is still required either to manually sort articles fed into the apparatus, or to manually sort articles dispensed from the apparatus, into appropriate size categories such as wash cloths, hand towels, bath towels, pillow cases and sheets.
To applicant's knowledge, no practical apparatus is available which will automatically sort such laundered articles, either before or after folding, into preselected categories such as size, or which will allow such sorting on a selective basis, that is, which will allow an operator to cause selected articles to by-pass the sorting apparatus and proceed to a common discharging portion, such as sometimes may be necessary or desired for various reasons.